Tom Iliffe,
professor of marine biology and one of the world’s most experienced cave diving
scientists, led a diving team on a seven-day trip to explore, map and
investigate the depths of Phantom Springs Cave, located near Balmorhea in West Texas. Team members
went as deep as 462 feet and recorded the dive on cameras, but still did not
find the end of the cave.

“There’s really no telling how deep
it is or how far the cave goes,” Iliffe says of the Jan. 8 cave dive.

The team ended its dive in a tunnel
30-40 feet wide by 20 feet high that continued as far as their lights would
penetrate. The only casualty of the dive was a $7,000 diving scooter that
imploded due to the extreme pressure and sunk to the bottom in the deepest
section of the cave where it still remains.

“This is also one of the longest
underwater cave systems in the country,” Iliffe adds. “You have to swim
horizontally for over a mile at an average depth of 30 feet before arriving at
the spot where the cave passage begins to stairstep down, getting deeper and
larger all the time. The cave water is significantly warmer than what would
normally be expected for this area, thus suggesting this geothermally warmed
water almost certainly originates from deep below the Earth’s surface.”

Iliffe’s team consisted of 10 expert
divers coming from Texas, Tennessee and Florida. In addition to two deep
divers, other team members specialized in cave mapping, video photography and
lighting, and scientific investigations.

Iliffe at the entrance of Phantom
Springs Cave (Photo by Curt Bowen)

Phantom Springs Cave is located
about 120 miles southwest of Midland. The nearest town is Balmorhea, population
435, and the cave is on land owned by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

Few people have ever been in the
waters of Phantom Springs Cave and a scientific permit to investigate its deep
waters is not easy to obtain. The Bureau of Reclamation firmly restricts
access to the cave for environmental reasons and to preserve the very sensitive
ecosystem.

Iliffe and the team hope to return
to Phantom Springs sometime later this year to continue mapping and exploring
the cave and to identify various types of cave-adapted organisms.

“Divers have been exploring this
cave for more than 30 years, but there are still parts of it that no one has
entered,” he adds.

“It just goes on and on. No
end has been found in either the deep sections of the upstream tunnel or, at the
opposite end of the cave, far downstream where the passage size becomes much
smaller and flow rates increase drastically. Both ends present different types
of challenges – either diving to extreme depths upstream or fighting against
strong currents to get back out of the downstream part of the cave.”

The project was supported by ADM
Foundation, Karst Underwater Research of Florida and the U.S. Bureau of
Reclamation.

Iliffe has explored more than 1,500
underwater caves, more than anyone else in the world. During his 35-year
career, he has discovered more than 300 species of marine life.